


it's not the waking, it's the rising

by blackkat



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Emperor CC-2224 | Cody, Fix-It of Sorts, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-Canonical Character Death, Past Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, mention of suicide, mentioned child death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:09:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Two years after the Empire's rise, Cody wakes up.
Relationships: Jon Antilles/CC-2224 | Cody
Comments: 140
Kudos: 750
Collections: favourite fics from a galaxy far far away





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every year for my birthday I try to post something that's self-indulgent and I'd probably otherwise just sit on, and apparently this year my indulgence is _angst_.

It starts like this:

Cody stops dead in the middle of the hall, passkey tumbling from his fingers to clatter on the deck. Everything is grey and white and grim, and his armor is white white white without any markings at all. There's an ache in his brain, a tremble in his hands, and not even the mercy of momentary amnesia to blunt the realization of what he’s done.

He remembers, vivid, vicious, the way it felt to take aim at Obi-Wan, the way he pulled the trigger. Remembers the fall, the look of surprise, the satisfaction. Remembers, too clear, what happened on the planet below just this morning, and the Rebel cell they put down, leaving no survivors.

There were children down there, he thinks, and feels sick to his stomach when before he’d only felt vague distaste.

Cody doesn’t know what happened. Doesn’t _understand_. There was the Emperor’s voice, the order—execute traitorous commanding officers, reliant on Palpatine’s verbal command alone—but…he doesn’t know how that became _kill the Jedi, all the Jedi_.

The 501st marched on the Temple. The 501st _murdered every child in the crèche_.

Cody staggers, knees giving way. He stumbles into the wall, grabbing desperately for something to hold him on his feet, but there’s nothing. His stomach turns, and bile bubbles in the back of his throat as his vision wavers towards darkness.

Hells, but what have they _done_?

Instinct more than willpower pushes him back to his feet, gets him standing even as the world lurches. Cody thinks of his men, of the rest of the 212th, and has to swallow hard. He took casualty counts after they stormed the Rebel base. He saw the list of numbers marking the men who died, and all he felt was satisfaction at an operation successfully executed. No care for those under his command, his _brothers_. No thought for the lives cut short as anything other than statistics. And—it was him, it was _him_ and Cody knows that, but what the hell was he even thinking? What was he _doing_? How could any part of him take that, accept that, and not even bother to spare a moment to grieve?

Cody's breath hitches hard in his chest, not a sob but a close cousin, all tangled up with horror and remorse. All he has is slow-burn anger, the hotter burn of tears behind his eyes, and he _aches_.

His general is dead. His general is dead because Cody killed him, and Cody has spent the last two years serving an empire that declared every Jedi a traitor and burned the Republic to the ground.

A sob breaks through the quiet of the night-shift ship, loud and ragged and desperate, but it’s not from Cody's throat. His head snaps up, and in an instant he’s moving, practically running down the corridor and around the next bend of the hall. There's a figure in featureless armor slumped in the middle of the walkway, and Cody has one horrifying second where he can't tell who it is. He looks and he doesn’t _know_ , because the blank white armor is nothing but plastoid, not even a hint of paint to set it apart from every other trooper on the ship. Hands are scrabbling at the helmet, hauling it off, but even that doesn’t help. Regulation haircut, no tattoos—they're not allowed them, aren’t allowed any marks of individuality. Or maybe they just don’t _want_ them, and that’s a thousand times more chilling to consider.

But—

But.

That gasping breath, that hitched sob. Cody _remembers_ , because he’s the one who had to deliver the news of Waxer’s death in friendly fire. He’s the one who sat up for night after night, letting his brother cry into his shoulder, shaking, _broken_.

“Boil,” he says, and Boil chokes, shakes.

“We—we killed them,” he says, ragged, _ruined_ , and Cody closes his eyes, reaches out. Hauls Boil in, clutching him close like he did after Waxer’s death, and tries not to think about how Boil’s face is just like every other clone’s, indistinct and unremarkable. How, ten minutes before, Cody would have thought of him by his CT number and seen nothing wrong with it, and Boil would have answered without so much as a second thought.

Cody doesn’t ask which _them_ Boil means. There have been far too many bodies left behind these last two years, too many victims. Too many _Jedi_ , and Cody wants to shake, wants to curl up with Boil somewhere dark and hunker down until this all fades away, until they wake up, until it’s all a dream and it’s _not real_.

“Yeah, _vod_ ,” he says, and the name is unfamiliar on his tongue after two years without speaking it, clumsy and rough and half-forgotten. No brothers, in the Empire. Just soldiers. “We did.”

“It was us,” Boil whispers. “It was _us_ but it _wasn’t_.”

There was something. Something that changed them. Not a lot. Not enough to take away memories or thoughts or training. But—they faded, after Order 66. They conformed. They let their generals and admirals do the thinking, took orders, followed them. There was nothing left of the individuals behind the identical faces, and no trace of the desire to find them.

Maybe that’s the most insidious thing of all. Whatever controlled them, it stripped away all thought of _wanting_ to be people and not just weapons to be aimed and fired.

“Kriff,” Cody breathes, and digs his fingers into Boil’s hair. Sits back on his knees, lightheaded, and realizes that he’s shaking. He’s _trembling_ , so hard he couldn’t aim a blaster even if he was pressing it against the side of his own head. And—maybe that’s a more tempting thought than it’s ever been. Maybe he would try, if he didn’t have Boil in his arms, coming apart.

Boil’s gauntlets scrape the plastoid of Cody's armor, dig in. The sound that shatters out of his throat is almost a laugh, and he buries his face in Cody's neck.

“Never heard you swear before, sir,” he manages.

Cody chokes on a breath, breathes out something that might be a chuckle in a kinder universe. “I was saving it,” he says, “for a time when it felt right.”

No need to say that that time is now. It’s obvious. So clearly, _achingly_ obvious.

Boil’s words break into a sob before he can even get them out, and he digs his fingers into Cody's armor like he’s going to try and claw his way through. “Waxer,” he breathes. “Waxer would shoot me himself, with what we did. He’d have executed me.”

Cody wants to argue, wants to protest. Waxer was _kind_. He was the kindest soul Cody ever met. But—

He thinks of Waxer, and then he thinks of Rex. Rex, lost during the Siege of Mandalore, dead and burned and _gone_ , but if he could see Cody now—

Cody wouldn’t even deserve the mercy of a quick death, but Rex would probably give it to him anyway. And Cody wouldn’t even try to protest, knowing—everything.

It wasn’t them, but it _was_.

Cody doesn’t know what changed them, has even less of an idea what changed them back. But there _was_ a change, there was something, and he knows it, feels it, _sees_ it.

They’ve got their names back, and even if it’s much too little and far too late, they’re going to have to make the most of it.

(Or maybe it starts like this:

There's a storm outside lashing the windows, but there’s always a storm on Kamino. There's blood on the floor of the lab, a body, but Te Tinu can't feel regret, can't feel remorse. Not for this, not ever.

Her hand is steady on the blaster, unwavering as she presses it to the center of Nala Se’s chest. One hand on the weapon, her other on the computer, and she’s been studying for half a decade now to know how to do precisely this. The command is multilayered, delicate, precise, but Te Tinu is a scientist just as much as she’s a Rebel.

The Empire hasn’t reached its claws into Kamino yet. Nothing much has changed. But Te Tinu has _seen_ the outside world, has watched the clones she grew from genetic material be born and raised and _ruined_ , every shred of personhood stripped away.

Te Tinu is a scientist just as much as she’s a Rebel. They were creating _souls_ in this lab, and Nala Se stripped all of that away with one organic chip, all for the sake of _credits_. The scientific loss is staggering.

“You won't be allowed to do this,” Nala Se says, coldly furious, but she keeps her hands raised, her body still. Her eyes are arctic, but Te Tinu meets them with defiance, with hatred, with the resentment that she’s kept buried all these many, many years.

There are guards coming. That’s fine. Te Tinu never planned to leave this laboratory alive.

“You made your army, Nala Se,” she hisses. “You made your army and then you _destroyed_ them. You stripped them of value, of _meaning_ , for _credits_. You are the one who should have been stopped long ago.”

The computer chimes, the program loaded. Te Tinu smiles, even as Nala Se’s eyes widen.

“Look,” she says, and shifts just enough that Nala Se can see the holograms. The systems, the code she’s added, the command. “Look at this, Nala Se. Look at _victory_.”

“This isn't victory, this is _madness_ ,” Nala Se tells her, but Te Tinu just smiles.

“It is a victory for science,” she corrects, and tips her head. “A victory for the Rebellion, too.”

Nala Se’s nostrils flare. “You will be slaughtered before you can take one step from this lab,” she says. “And I will undo every last piece of your shoddy work, Te Tinu.”

“Ah,” Te Tinu says, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her before the threat. “That would be most inconvenient, wouldn’t it? I spent so long on this, after all.”

Nala Se registers what she’s about to do half an instant before Te Tinu pulls the trigger. She always was the smartest person in any given room.

Coldly, Te Tinu watches her body collapse, long limbs tangling, bright blue blood seeping out across the tile. Deftly, she holsters the blaster, checks that the other scientist is equally dead, and turns back to the computer. There's a thump against the door, a raised voice, but Te Tinu ignores it, focusing on her program. The biochips implanted in the clone armies are as flawless as any other aspect of Kaminoan design, for all that they're meant for a fundamentally flawed purpose, so they're almost impossible to disrupt. Te Tinu doesn’t need to disrupt them, though, just…change their current function.

The pre-encoded orders can't be stripped away, replaced by new ones. It would be like reprogramming the chips from the ground up, but they're already active, already working. A soft reboot is what’s needed, and Te Tinu’s program will do just that.

There's no more Chancellor to pass out orders. He’s the emperor now, and the coding in the chips is quite specific. Without the direct title of Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine’s commands will mean as little as anyone else’s.

A weakness, though Nala Se never would have termed it so.

The door of the lab shudders, creaks. Te Tinu doesn’t look back, types in the last set of commands and activates them.

There's a long, long moment as the blood pools and the door groans and someone speaks loudly, quickly, fiercely, so very unlike a Kaminoan.

Then, soft, the computer beeps.

The chips reset.

Te Tinu smiles, even as the door gives way. She turns to face the Defense Force, one hand going for her blaster, the other hitting the button that will trigger a wipe of every computer in the lab and leave them unable to reverse her work.

“For science,” she says, and raises the blaster, taking a graceful step forward. “For _liberty_.”

The Defense Force fires, but they're already far too late.

Te Tinu dies with a smile on her face, bright blood on the floor of the lab, and regrets nothing but the time it took to make it here.

She’s won.)

Or maybe, maybe, it starts like this:

Cody looks around the room, at the figures there, at the familiar faces. At the same face, repeated, and some have scars to set them apart, some have old tattoos, but most don’t. Most of them have lost their markers, their names. Most of them have been turned into nothing but puppets for a greater cause. Puppets for a cause they once gave their lives to stop.

Cody looks around the room, at the remnants of Ghost and Torrent and the Wolfpack, at trooper after trooper who woke up this morning with the desperate, horrified realization of what they became. Of what they _did_ , and how their hands were forced, and how they killed their generals, killed civilians, killed for an empire that _destroyed_ them.

His hands are still shaking. They haven’t stopped since he remembered himself.

Cody wishes, dearly, just for a moment, that he had Rex at his back again, or Wolffe. But they're both dead, and probably better off for it. He can't imagine what Rex's reaction would have been to the massacre at the Temple. To the fact that the 501st was used to do it.

Comet is sitting in the corner, side by side with Boil and Wooley. They're tangled together, grieving together, and it’s only seeing them like that that makes Cody realize how long it’s been since he saw _any_ brothers touching. Not something deemed essential to performance, and so it was quietly shunted away.

Cody breathes, and breathes, and still his hands won't stop shaking.

It’s Neyo, of all the troopers, who steps up beside him. He curls a hand around Cody's shoulder, and—

 _Oh_ , Cody thinks, and has to swallow. It’s been a hell of a long time since anyone touched _him_ , hasn’t it? Before Neyo, before Boil—he can't even begin to remember.

“Breathe,” Neyo says, short, curt, but not unkind. “We all know we’re going to do something. The only question is what.”

Cody was a marshal commander, once, before the empire rose. Back when he could think clearly enough to _be_ a commander, rather than just another follower. He knows strategy, and he knows tactics, and he knows how to prioritize what _has_ to be done over what he wants to do. And yet—

He can't make that decision here. Looking at the identical, unaltered faces, the unchanging grey uniforms, the plain white armor, all he can think is that he wants to burn the whole damned cruiser down around them and be done with it.

The break room is empty of anyone who isn't a clone. The other officers don’t come here, don’t care. The clones make good obedient drones, who work well without supervision and don’t need a firm hand to maintain their fanatic belief in the Empire. Or at least, that’s how it was. That’s how it’s been for two years now.

Cody doesn’t care. In this, at least, it’s valuable, because it lets the clones gather without anyone thinking things are off.

He leans forward, elbows on the table, trembling hands clasped. Tries not to think too hard, tries not to dwell, but—

“It’s all of us, now?” he asks Neyo.

Neyo pauses, mouth tightening. Cody pretends not to see the way he presses his fingers tight against the numbers tattooed beneath his eye. “As far as I could tell,” he says roughly. “I contacted three other clone commanders on different cruisers, and they're all…”

“Awake,” Cody supplies quietly, because that’s the only word for it. They were in a daze, these last two years. Dreaming, maybe, trapped in a nightmare. Now they're all awake, but unlike with a dream, they have to deal with the fallout now.

Neyo grimaces, but doesn’t argue. “We don’t even know what happened,” he says, and there's a thread of anger to it. “Or if we could go _back._ ”

Back to sleepwalking, placid and loyal. Back to the haze of not caring, not _being_. Cody breathes out, and it shakes, but—

With rage, this time.

“We might not know how, but we know _who_ ,” he says tightly. “Only one person benefitted from us becoming…that.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” Sinker, at the next table over, asks roughly. His eyes are red, and Boost is nowhere to be seen.

The Wolfpack shot Plo Koon out of the air over Cato Neimoidia, fired on him from behind and brought his fighter down in a ball of flames. Until yesterday, every last one of them was proud of that fact.

Cody closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Sinker’s face, his once-white hair grown in dark again, because individuality was another thing stripped from them alongside their free will. So that he doesn’t have to think about firing on Obi-Wan, and watching him fall, and feeling glad to have carried out an order.

They all murdered their generals. The only people in the galaxy who ever tried to fight for them, who ever treated them like people in their own right, and he and his brothers slaughtered them right down to the last youngling.

Cody's going to be sick. But—later. When he can lock himself in his bunk and be weak, just for a little while.

Right now his brothers need him.

Forcing his eyes open, his breathing back under control, Cody looks up. He meets Neyo’s eyes, then Sinker’s, and smiles. It’s a rictus, death’s-head grin, full of teeth.

“Glory to the emperor,” he says. “Long may he reign.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s the first time Cody has seen Fox without his helmet on in two years.

That’s the thing that stops him short, that realization. He takes one look at Fox’s face in the holo, at the way his hair is threaded through with almost twice as much grey as it was before, and feels a little like he’s been punched in the gut all over again.

Two years. Two years since he saw his batchmate’s face, and before three days ago he wouldn’t even have realized there was anything strange in that.

“ _Vod_ ,” he says, and already knows the answer to the question he’s going to ask. Fox wouldn’t have answered the comm without his helmet if he were still under control.

It still almost makes something crack right through his chest, the way Fox’s expression twists at that one word. His breath hitches, and he takes a step back, and Cody watches in silence as he crumples back onto the bare expanse of his bunk, hands coming up to cover his face. Watches the fracture, and the relief, and the horror that equals and exceeds it, and doesn’t let himself look away.

“ _Vod_ ,” he says again, and Fox’s breath rattles out of his lungs like he’s just taken a gut-shot.

“Karking hell, Cody,” he says, and that’s a confession too. Cody hasn’t actually heard his name from anyone since—

He swallows, and it feels like glass in his throat. Obi-Wan was the last person to use his name before Palpatine gave the order.

“Yeah,” he manages, and sinks down, gripping the projector as he settles against the wall deep in the bowels of the ship. There are only clones down here. No one will care, even if they do see him. They all feel the same right now. “Been going around, Fox.”

Fox lifts his head, rubbing at his mouth, and even in the flickering blue of the holo, Cody can see how pale he is, the tight, almost ill line of his mouth. There are lines around his eyes that weren’t there the last time they were face to face, but Cody doesn’t know if they're new or something from the last two years, and he doesn’t know how to ask.

“Vader’s here,” Fox says roughly. “Cody, _Vader_ is here. And he’s…”

“A Sith,” Cody starts, but before he can even get another word out Fox is shaking his head.

“No,” he says. “No, Cody, you don’t—” He breaks off, twisting a hand into his hair, and his breath shakes. Cody _aches_ , aches with the distance, with the fact that Fox is _right there_ but Cody still can't touch him, can't brace their shoulders together or sit beside him the way they did so often in training.

“Don’t understand?” Cody asks quietly. “Fox, we’re going to meet the _Emperor_. I understand perfectly—”

“No!” Fox’s voice cracks, loud like blaster-fire in the quiet. Cody twitches, automatically looking up to see if anyone heard, but there's nothing but the grinding of machinery down here, and the sound doesn’t carry. “Cody, Thire was _there_ , and he told me—” He breaks off, takes another rattling breath. Looks up, and Fox is a bastard who forgot his fear in his tank when he was decanted, but—this is the closest to it that Cody has ever seen on his face. “Vader—he’s Skywalker.”

Someday, someday, Cody's going to stop feeling like each new revelation punches him in the gut.

Fox grimaces, sits up like there's an impossible weight strung over his shoulders. “Thire got his body off Mustafar with a contingent of the Guard, on the Emperor’s orders” he says, and it’s bleak. “He was burned to shit, but—it was Skywalker.”

Cody doesn’t have any words. He can't _breathe_. Vader— _Skywalker_ was the one who led the 501st in their march on the Temple, to slaughter the Jedi inside of it. Skywalker, after everything, after Obi-Wan—

Cody digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, and tries not to mind the tremble in them.

“Vader,” he says roughly. “He’s—we account for Vader. He’s the Emperor’s right hand. And he’s a _Sith_. He goes.”

Fox’s bark of laughter is entirely without humor. “Never argued that part,” he says bitterly, and when Cody raises his head, Fox meets his gaze with the half-dead desperation that’s become so familiar since Cody woke up. He hasn’t been able to look in a mirror, not yet, but if he did, Cody already knows that’s what he would see. “How the _kriff_ do we get rid of someone who can read minds, Cody?”

Cody's been wondering the same thing. Been wondering how long _any_ of this can last when he’s expected to march right behind the Emperor and put on a show of force for the people on Alderaan. He’s never been sure what Jedi can do, let alone what Sith can do, and the thought that Palpatine will take one look at them and _know_ sits like a rock in Cody's stomach. But—

They can't wait for one of the admirals to notice, turn them over. Whatever happened might happen again, and the idea of Palpatine being able to wipe away everything they are with three little words is so terrifying that Cody doesn’t have a way to express it. They _have_ to do something. They can't go back.

The Jedi are already dead. Two years into the Empire’s hold and the Jedi are gone, the Senate is a puppet body, and so many thousands of worlds have been enslaved, wiped out, torn apart.

Cody and his brothers put themselves on the frontlines to keep people safe. They fought a war for a galaxy that didn’t even see them as human, just so this wouldn’t happen. And now it has anyway. Cody doesn’t think of himself as an angry man, but—

That urge to burn it all down is still there, knotted up beneath his breastbone.

“Has to be soon,” he says, and Fox looks so kriffing _tired_. Just as tired as Cody feels. Still, he meets Cody's eyes, inclines his head. Vader on Coruscant, the Emperor headed for Alderaan. Cody in one place, about to dock with the Emperor’s flagship, and Fox in the other, getting ready to see Vader off. Anakin off.

Well, Cody thinks, and breathes, and breathes. Because he can, because he _knows_ he’s breathing, and for two long years he never even cared whether he was or not. “At least,” he says out loud, and it’s bitter, bitter and bracing. “Easier to do, knowing that, right?”

Fox scoffs, but his mouth pulls into a bare, crooked smile. “Always knew he was an asshole,” he says, raw, and Cody laughs because if he doesn’t he’s going to reach for his blaster and do something he can't take back.

“Yeah,” he agrees on an exhale, and digs his fingers into his thighs hard enough to bruise. “Kriff. _Vader_.”

“So much for the Hero With No Fear,” Fox says, sardonic, sharp enough to cut flesh. He pauses, then runs a hand through his greying hair and says, “A bomb. On his ship. When he’s leaving. If there's no person close, thinking about what they’ve done, it won't give us away.”

It’s a good idea. Especially since Vader normally takes a TIE fighter when he has to move between a planet and a cruiser, and travels alone. Cody had considered the same thing for the Emperor’s ship, but—

Kirff. Enough clones have died for his sake. Cody doesn’t want to kill any more, even if they volunteer.

“I was thinking,” he says slowly, deliberately. Carefully, because that’s how this is going to have to be. They won't get a second chance. “Of a sniper rifle, from a distance. Sinker’s willing to distract him.”

“Crazy bastard. It’s always the quiet ones,” Fox mutters, like he’s not one of those quiet ones, too. Cody's seen him throw himself off buildings.

There's a pause, and then Fox leans back against the wall, pulling a leg up onto the bunk to brace his foot there. He stares at Cody for a moment, and the scruff he used to cultivate is gone, replaced with a regulation clean shave. It makes him look strangely vulnerable.

His eyes don’t, though. His eyes are burning, red and tired and framed with deep lines, but almost mad in their brightness as he stares at Cody.

“You take the shot, you take the throne, _vod_ ,” he says, and Cody's throat closes.

Neyo said the same thing to him. Cody still hasn’t quite recovered.

“Going to be my Vader?” he counters.

Fox still has the most irritating laugh in the galaxy, sharp and almost wild, a bark of sound that grates across Cody's nerves like it was specifically designed to aggravate him. He’s so kriffing grateful to hear it again that his eyes burn, and it feels like his bones are aching.

“Sure,” Fox says, like he thinks they can do this. Like he thinks there’s a chance in the nine _hells_ that they can pull this off. “You need someone to keep you from kicking all your problems in the face, and Neyo's not going to do that.”

“Least I deal with my problems,” Cody says, and he hurts. They’ve had this conversation too many times before. If he closes his eyes right now, they could be anywhere else, years ago, sharing a drink even with the galaxy between them. “And don’t try to drown them in caf.”

Fox’s mouth opens, and Cody can see the familiar retort on his tongue. But then he stops, stops short, and his expression _wrenches_. For a moment he looks utterly lost, caught off guard by it, and he closes his mouth, swallows hard.

“Can't remember the last time I had caf,” he says, ragged, like it’s a confession, and in those eight words Cody hears everything he _isn't_ saying. All the little things that were part of them were stripped away, sanded down until they were blank slates, obedient droids, and the realization is _gutting_.

For two years, they’ve been strangers to themselves, participants in atrocities no clone ever would have committed. Prisoners without even knowing it, trapped inside bland orders and fanatical devotion, and the breaking of that—

Cody won't ever, _ever_ say he wishes they hadn’t woken up. But sometimes the little things hit the hardest, and it’s like coming to in the hallway all over again.

“We killed them all,” he finds himself saying, without even meaning to, and his voice breaks. “We—all of them, Fox. Even the _younglings_. The Temple was—”

“I know,” Fox says, dry-eyed, but there's still that wild, mad sort of desperation in him that hits too close to home. The Jedi loved them. The Jedi _saved_ them, time and time again, put their own bodies in the way when the clones were in danger and they could help. And Cody and the rest—they shot them, _executed_ them, because some switch in their head got flipped by one man, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

“I helped carry the bodies out,” Fox says, low, and when Cody glances at him, he’s looking away. “After. From the Chancellor’s office. Saesee Tiin, and Kit Fisto, and Agen Kolar.”

Cody curls a fist against his forehead. Saesee Tiin was quiet, kind, a pilot, and one of the best in the Order. Oddball used to go into raptures about his flying. Kit Fisto—everyone loved him. Every clone _adored_ him. He was a smile in the darkness, a joke when the world was ending. And Agen Kolar was soft-spoken, honorable, _fierce_. Cody fought with him a time or two, and on anyone else his confidence would have been recklessness, but for him it was just calm certainty.

To think of the three of the dead by Palpatine’s hand makes a fist close tight around Cody's heart, and he breathes through it for a long moment before he can ask, “Did they—did they get pyres?”

Fox’s laugh is low, raw, _furious_. “We dumped them in with the trash, like we were ordered to.” He scrubs a hand over his face, then says, “Mace Windu—he came in with them, fell from the Chancellor’s window. Never found a body, though.”

A fall from that height—even if he weren’t hurt, he’d be hard-pressed to survive that. But at the very least he got away, got to die somewhere else, didn’t get dumped in the trash like the other High Generals. Cody grits his teeth, not able to help the sound that’s pulled from his throat, but Fox isn't going to judge him for it.

“You think any younglings survived?” he asks, so soft it’s hardly a question at all, fractured and desperate. The 501st marched on the Temple, and Cody of all people knows how skilled they are, knows how unguarded the Temple would have been. A place of peace, of learning, of _family_ , and Anakin Skywalker led his kriffing brainwashed men right into the heart of it and made them cut down the only people who ever gave a damn about the clones at all.

He wants to cry, but he can't. His eyes are dry, and there's a yawning, empty _thing_ inside of him that’s burning, so hot and angry all of his tears are _gone_.

Fox’s expression twists, and he buries his face in his arms. “Karking _hell_ , Cody,” he gets out, and his shoulders tremble, hands fisting in his own hair.

He doesn’t raise his head again, and Cody doesn’t ask him to. Just sits there, back against the cold metal, watching the flickering blue of the holo cast strange shadows across the floor. He knows what he _wants_ the answer to be, but—

The universe isn't kind enough to give him that answer. Just silence, and doubt, and the terrible creeping dread of a world that’s come apart at the seams and left them with nothing to put back together.

It’s almost _easy_ , in the end.

Doom volunteers to wear Cody's armor when they greet the Emperor. Not that there’s a difference these days, but Cody still hands it over, watches Doom buckle the pieces on as he checks his rifle for the hundredth time, every motion entirely familiar. It’s the symbolism, he thinks, and meets Doom’s eyes half a second before that blank, featureless helmet slides over familiar features.

“Calm, _vod_ ,” he says. “Just lie back and think of the security protocols.”

Doom’s laugh cracks out of his throat, a bare bit of sound in the quiet bunkroom. “I can keep my head,” he says, and Cody thinks of Rex, dead on the _Tribunal_ a day before the Empire rose. Thinks of _sometimes, in war, it’s hard to be the one who survives_ , and checks the scope one more time to distract himself from the truth of it. It should be Rex right here, ready to help put Cody's plan into action. But—good that he isn't. Better that he didn’t see what they became. Better that he died without innocent blood on his hands, and that Cody is the one who’s left to dig through the ashes and find what pieces remain.

It’s hard to be the one who survives, Cody thinks, and slides his fingers down the barrel. A slugthrower would be better, but—Cody's a good shot. Alpha-17 trained him to be the best. He’s not going to miss.

“Best use for all of those reg manuals,” Doom says, and checks the time, compulsive. Cody already knows they have an hour and a half until the Emperor’s ship docks. “Think it would have worked on a Jedi mind-trick?”

“I think we’re going to find out,” Cody says, and Doom shouldn’t even be here, so if everything goes right, no one will expect him not to be Cody. They can pass for each other even close up, too many years spent next to each other in training making them move the same. Rex was the only one who could mimic Cody better, but—

But.

Doom sighs, adjusting his gauntlets one more time before he pulls himself upright, straightens his spine and falls into parade rest. It’s almost eerie how familiar that motion is; all the clones are good with body language, because they have to be, and that’s Cody. It’s him in plain white armor he never would have worn, and he has to look away before the strangeness makes his skin crawl.

“Just think about the regs,” Doom says, to himself more than Cody, and then, “Alpha would be so proud.”

Cody snorts, pushing to his feet, and it’s too easy. There should be some resistance, some weight on him, but all he can feel is the weight of the Imperial marksman’s uniform that a brother stole from one of the squads that just departed, the heft of his rifle as he slings it over his back. “Any word of him?” he asks, because he’s been careful with his comms, knowing full well that transmissions are monitored. Doom was planetside, though; he was able to get a few comms out that the Empire didn’t have a direct line to.

“No,” Doom says quietly. “After, he ghosted. Bly said most of the Alphas did. Apparently whatever got us didn’t get them.”

After. _After_ , like there’s a clear dividing line. Cody supposes that there is. “We’ll have to keep looking, once this is done,” he says, and Doom raps his knuckles lightly against the plain white vambrace.

“Alpha would kill all of us, for what we did,” he says, quietly rueful, and the truth of it aches in Cody's throat. “Word from Fox?”

“Not yet.” Cody doesn’t let himself check his comm. Fox knows what he’s doing. And if he doesn’t—

There's half a galaxy between them. Cody won't be able to save him from Vader anyway.

A hand closes over his shoulder, grips, and Cody looks up into Doom’s eyes behind the unmarked helmet. “Luck, _vod_ ,” Doom says quietly.

Cody breathes in, breathes out. Nods, then picks up the uniform cap from the bunk and pulls it on. “Boost’s men are ready,” he says, because he needs to. “They’ll get the officers. And Crys and his squads are ready to take the bridge as soon as the Emperor’s gone.”

“We’ll get it done,” Doom promises, and Cody steels himself, nods, and reaches out. Doom leans in, unhesitating, and the press of their foreheads is a touch Cody hasn’t had in two full years. It makes him close his eyes, trying to leech off Doom’s grounding presence, but there's too much. Too many things, and Cody with his sniper rifle, out of uniform and out for blood.

“If this doesn’t work,” Doom starts, rough.

Cody thumps their foreheads together lightly, then pulls away. “Better we died trying _something_ ,” he says, and nothing could make him regret waking up. Not even the horror that was waiting. This is just part of that.

“Yeah,” Doom says on a breath, and turns. Walks out the door, posture perfect, with the particular stride Cody has because he never wore _kama_. Going to meet the Emperor, reciting reg manuals over in his head like a mantra that will keep him safe from the Sith who destroyed them.

Cody doesn’t watch him walk away. If they don’t manage this, it’s going to mean a route, every clone put back under control, but—

Kriff. At least they’re _trying_.

It wasn’t a hard decision to make, as soon as they were awake. Things couldn’t stay the same, the Emperor couldn’t stay in power. This is what they fought for, in the war, and the fact that any sort of moral direction was ripped away from them doesn’t change what they used to stand for. Liberation for world, peace with their bodies on the line, an end to the Separatists who wanted to destroy all of that.

The Seps are gone now. All a ploy, Cody thinks grimly as he makes his way through the halls. A ploy that _worked_ , and destroyed everything in its wake. They all fought and died for _nothing_.

For an Empire that turned them into _puppets_. There was never any chance a clone would take that lying down.

No one glances at him as he passes; they see the uniform, the cap, and don’t remember that clones have faces, that the former marshal commander has a scar and a well-worn rifle and a stride like a man used to armor but not fused to it. Cody is bitterly grateful for the lack of attention, even in the bay where the Emperor is scheduled to arrive. It’s still early, and there are only a few people organizing things. Cody finds Neyo near one of the doors, makes a show of marching up to him and presenting a security clearance that doesn’t exist, and Neyo waves him off without more than a cursory glance, a flicker of old clone hand-sign that’s simply _shoot straight_.

Cody always shoots straight. That was never going to be a problem.

There's scaffolding around the edges of the bay, narrow catwalks for working above the ships that are usually docked there. There's a squad of clones inspecting it, and Cody passes them with a picture-perfect salute, gets one in return. Comet watches him go, then turns back, calling orders like there's absolutely nothing remarkable about a sniper playing security, and Cody finds the platform set up for him in a darkened corner that the light doesn’t reach. Swings his rifle down, sinks onto his belly, and breathes.

In, out, in again. Take the sight, adjust, breathe again. Wait.

It’s a familiar thing, the stillness. Time is fluid, open, untethered. The activity in the bay below doesn’t touch him, and Cody watches it with the cool distance of a hawk on a spire. Even the perfectly timed thump of boots as rank after rank of clones in perfectly white armor marching in doesn’t move him.

He wonders how Fox is doing. Vader will leave Coruscant soon, unless something delays him. A bomb will go with him, one he can find and three he probably won't, ready to blow, and it should happen just as the Emperor lands, just as the shot comes clear. Cody hopes it does; if the Sith have a sense of each other, he doesn’t want one’s death to alert the other. But—

The Jedi felt each other dying, but it wasn’t enough to save them. This won't be, either.

The bay falls into quiet, waiting, and Cody sweeps a careful look across them, tips his head as a voice in his ear announces the Emperor’s departure from the other cruiser. There's one flash of color in the midst of all the white, and even sunk into stillness it still makes Cody's heart turn over in his chest to see the flash of grey and red moving towards the front of the ranks. Sinker’s not quite in sight of the main part of the bay, but—Cody can see him. Sinker got his hands on some paint, apparently.

Grey for the Wolfpack and their general. Grey for mourning. But—also red, like the original Wolfpack.

Red to honor a parent, too.

Always the quiet ones, Cody thinks, and smiles, adjusting ever so faintly. Then he doesn’t think, keeps his mind empty and still, just watching, just waiting. This is familiar, even if he’s two years out of practice. This is useful, and something he enjoyed once, and something he’s good at. He doesn’t need to think beyond that.

It’s like it happens elsewhere, or to someone else. Cody watches the ship land, the ramp descend. Watches the red-clad Guard march down into the bay, fall back, turn and present. And then—

A scuffle, a shout. Sinker shoves his way forward as Palpatine sets foot on the deck, and he’s got a vibrosword in one hand and a blaster in the other. There's a rush of confusion, reaction, and he charges with a shout that would have made any of their trainers bust him down to maintenance immediately. Fires, and the bolt flies true, but Palpatine throws up a hand to block it with a snarl, turns to face him.

Back of the head, Cody doesn’t think, because he doesn’t need to.

He takes the shot, and his hands don’t shake at all.

The Emperor doesn't even make it one more step.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Glory To The Emperor - Long May He Reign](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29583990) by [alyyks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks)




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